Brittany, Deb, And Cindy's Story

Brittany

Cindy Campbell and Deb Ziegler of St. John Chrysostom Episcopal School in Rancho Santa Margarita once compared notes as neighbors, parents, and teachers. Soon they may have something else in common: the incalculable pain of losing a child.

Ziegler's daughter is Brittany Maynard, the 29-year-old Southern Californian and St. John's School alumna who moved to Oregon this year to take advantage of its right-to-die law. Diagnosed on Jan. 1 with terminal brain cancer, not long after her marriage to Dan Diaz, Maynard announced that she would end her life once her symptoms, including seizures and searing headaches, become unbearable. While she has chosen Saturday, Nov. 1, she reserved the right to delay her death depending on her illness's severity.

By going public with her decision and associating her name and story with Compassion & Choices, a right-to-die advocacy group, Maynard has sparked a heart-wrenching debate in churches, workplaces, homes, and the media about doctor-assisted suicide as a last-ditch expedient for those who are hopelessly ill. It is legal in four states besides Oregon: Vermont, Washington, Montana, and New Mexico.

At St. John's, we're praying for Brittany, giving thanks for her courage, and faithfully joining in the national conversation she has inspired. (As one of my colleagues pointed out, no less an authority than Anderson Cooper of “60 Minutes” erred in his pronunciation of our famous alumna's name. For the record, she is Brittany me-NARD.)

Cindy Campbell, our middle school principal, is preparing for the far more difficult work of consoling a grieving mother, should Brittany die as she has planned. Cindy has known Deb and Brittany since 1987, when they and the Campbells became neighbors in a development near St. John's called Robinson Ranch.

Ziegler soon distinguished herself at St. John's as a superstar middle school science teacher. Colleagues say she was ahead of her time. Under the leadership of head of school Michael Pratt, in 2014 St. John's adopted the innovative, interdisciplinary STEAM curriculum, combining science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. “In a way, Deb was doing STEAM before STEAM,” said Sheryll Grogan, a St. John's faculty member who worked closely with Ziegler.

Among her innovations was the Invention Convention. Campbell said that Brittany invented a device users could wear while applying hair spray so it wouldn't get in their eyes. “If she'd patented it, it may well have found a market,” Cindy says.

A straight-A student at St. John's, Brittany graduated from Santa Margarita Catholic High School and from UC Berkeley. After Deb Ziegler left the St. John's faculty in the early 1990s, she and Cindy Campbell remained friends. In 2009, she consoled Cindy over the death of her and Gregg's eldest son, Joey. Cindy never wanted or expected to have the opportunity to repay Deb's kindness. Now both mother and daughter have asked her to do just that.

“She has reached out to me as a mother who has lost a child and asked that I help her with this,” Cindy said last week. “Brittany has also asked me to be there to help her mother with the reality that Deb will be living without her.”

I thought of asking Cindy what she thought about Brittany's decision to end her life. I didn't, and I won't. It would be logical enough journalistically, but it seemed inappropriate pastorally, like an invasion of a friendship's privacy and a distraction from the ministry of love and support Cindy will undertake regardless of her feelings about Brittany's choice.

We have been talking openly about it at St. John's Church, however, both informally in the hallways and in two ministry settings: our monthly support group for caregivers, and our periodic “Sunday News” current events discussion.

Our members' reactions tend to match the national mood. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in the spring of 2013, 49% of U.S. adults disapprove of physician-assisted suicide and 47% approve. In contrast to other social and cultural issues, such as same-gender marriage, the numbers are relatively unaffected by age. Fifty-four percent of those ages 18 - 29 and 56% of those over 65 disapprove. The most amendable cohort is people ages 50 - 64, of whom 44% disapprove and 51% approve.

Brittany and Dan at their wedding last October

Brittany Maynard recoils from the word suicide, which normally denotes a dark and sometimes inexplicable act. She says she loves life and doesn't have a suicidal bone in her body. Advocates prefer the phrase “death with dignity,” which is, after all, their mission. Virtually no one who advocates for the right to die has motives other than compassion for those who suffer. Such compassion is a core ethic of our faith and practice. It's also hard to imagine looking someone in the face who is experiencing hopeless, unbearable pain and urging her to endure even more for the sake of a principle.

Still, the issue entails considerable tension and even paradox, and we've touched on these in our parish conversations. What if doctors can reliably promise patients that palliative care will protect them from the worst ravages of disease while giving them even a little more time to enjoy sunsets, Mozart, the Rolling Stones, and fellowship with loved ones and friends? Should those suffering hopelessly from the agony of schizophrenia or depression be empowered to end their lives? Are physicians being asked to compromise their often praiseworthy and even vital impulses to extend life?

On the other side of the debate, some ethicists argue that human freedom includes the right to decide whether to live or die. Besides, surely no one of right mind wants to die when the possibility and anticipation exist of some decent quality of life. Right-to-die states take special care to ensure that doctors not collaborate with patients who aren't thinking clearly or rationally.

Our church is debating these questions nationally as well as locally. In a 1994 resolution in Indianapolis, General Convention said that while euthanasia was “morally wrong and unacceptable,” doctors should be allowed to administer extra painkillers, even if it hastens death, as long as they intend to relieve pain rather than end life.

Addressing the related issue of physician-assisted suicide, our church's End-of-Life Task Force, reporting to 2000's General Convention in Denver, recommended that the church oppose the practice because it “sets ourselves up as gods in the place of God,” marginalizes the role of caregivers at the end of life, erodes our faith in physicians, and risks tempting sufferers to think they should die to avoid burdening others. Reflecting on the task force's work and acknowledging her own ambivalence and discernment, Bishop Suffragan Mary Douglas Glasspool of the Diocese of Los Angeles wrote last week to colleagues and friends that Brittany Maynard's experience gives communities of faith an opportunity to discern God's will - “not just an opportunity, but an obligation.”

At St. John's, we agree. As a first step, we are renewing our efforts to make sure our members have looked ahead to their own and their loved ones' last months, days, and hours. For instance, everyone should study and fill out "Five Wishes," an easy-to-use anthology of end-of-life instruction forms first published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and now available in 26 languages, thanks to a grant from the United Health Foundation. Each of us should also fill out a Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) form; California's is available here.

We'll do this good, necessary, difficult work in thanksgiving for own Brittany Maynard, who, with her devoted mother, excelled at science and now calls society to be relentlessly discerning about its end-of-life ethics even as it continues to advance in life-saving medical technology.

This article was originally published by The Episcopal News at the Diocese of Los Angeles.

Our Little Sphere

The morning after the Newtown massacre, I heard a fire engine coming from behind as I drove along Rancho Santa Margarita Parkway toward the church I serve in south Orange County, California. I pulled over and watched it roar past, a blur of Christmas red.

At such moments, does your mind work like mine? If I’m near home, at first I think, “Maybe they’re going to our house!” If I’m near work, I think, “I hope there’s nothing wrong at St. John's!” Once these brief visions of incendiary toasters or Advent wreaths recede, I pray that everyone is okay wherever the firefighters are headed and give thanks for all the people in the world who make a vocation out of rushing toward danger.

We’re usually not the victims when horror strikes – until we are. On the Monday after Newtown, I tried to imagine what St. John’s School parents were feeling at drop-off. Their heads probably assured them that their children would be safe on our campus. Their hearts warned that the parents of Sandy Hook Elementary School had made the same assumption.

To the extent that safety is a state of mind, we’re in more a dangerous state this Advent and Christmas. That same Monday at least enabled St. John’s School to thank some of those who risk their lives on our behalf. U.S. Marines and their families visited campus for a chapel service and meetings with our students. Kristen Lanham, Cindy Farnum, and other organizers of our annual Operation Christmas Spirit sent our guests back to Camp Pendleton with presents, food, and clothing.

Preaching in a church packed with students, colleagues, and our guests, I told my fire engine story in the hope of reassuring children who had been hearing about Newtown all weekend. While bad things do happen, we’re pretty safe. If we’re still worried or scared, it helps us feel better when we count our blessings, care for someone else who’s suffering, and give thanks for those from Afghanistan to the neighborhood firehouse who pledge themselves to safety and service.

Worry and fear won’t keep tragedy away, but planning and preparation may. At St. John’s School, we have regular fire and lock-down drills. At the national level, an urgent conversation is underway about the gun violence that marred this year more than any in recent memory. What can we do as one nation under God to deter such acts? It won’t be a thorough conversation unless everything’s on the table, including mental health education and treatment, the prevalence of semiautomatic weapons, and the way video game and television violence influences troubled people.

What might help most of all would be paying more and better attention to one another in our fractious, individuated society. Faith communities such as St. John’s can contribute by modeling how to conduct civil dialogue on difficult issues, build and sustain mutually supportive communities, and care for the lonely, despondent, and marginalized.

Thinking there’s nothing we can do after a moment like Newtown would inflict tragedy on tragedy. As Charles Dickens wrote in A Christmas Carol, “Any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness.” Every one of us is part of the solution, capable of accomplishing far more of God’s just and righteous purposes than we usually imagine. But how could it be otherwise at Christmas, as we prepare to celebrate our enlightenment and empowerment in Emmanuel, God with us?  

This post originally appeared in the Vaya Con Dios, the St. John's Episcopal Church newsletter.

Do We Go Now?

The brink of our St. John's School Baccalaureate service this morning. Thanks to the expectant faces of our eighth grade student ministers Kaitlin Sandell, Ryan Heppy, and Karna Small and those of the parents and grandparents of the class of 2012, this one goes in the "best work in the world" file.

A Message From Bishop Bruno

Jon Bruno, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and Rector of St. John's Episcopal Church and School, sent this letter to the Diocese on Thursday afternoon:

My dear friends,

As we move close to the 12th anniversary of my consecration on April 29, I am looking forward to the future, yet any time we make too many plans, we have to wait and listen for God.

Having had what I thought was a bout of pneumonia since the House of Bishops last met in March, I have gone back into the hospital to determine what this nagging problem has been. With the great assistance of Dr. David Cannom of Los Angeles Cardiology Associates, Dr. Glenn Hatfield of The Medical Group, Dr. Lasika Senevirante of the Los Angeles Cancer Network, and the staff of Good Samaritan Hospital, I have discovered that this nagging problem is more than I thought it was. But I have been convinced by Dr. Cannom and Dr. Senevirante that I am too stubborn to let this go by the wayside, so we will start immediately to begin aggressive treatment for Acute Monocytic Leukemia (AML M5).

I don't do anything lightly, and I am never surprised that when God calls me, it is to do more than I asked or thought. The doctors are of a mind that we can beat this, but I want to be honest with you: I am frightened. Not unlike the amputation, or the metabolic staph infection (MRSA) that I experienced, or the court cases, a few challenges have come across our path.

I want you folks to be as positive as you can be, and I need your prayers and support at this time. I want you to know that I have raised all of these concerns with my colleague Bishops, Diane Jardine Bruce and Mary Douglas Glasspool.

I will continue to serve as Bishop of the Diocese of Los Angeles with the able assistance of the Bishops Suffragan and the Executive Staff. I, together with Bishops Bruce and Glasspool, Canon David Tumilty, the Rev. Canon Joanna Satorius and Canon Robert Williams, will continue to be the management team of the Diocese.

This will require some changes for us to continue to serve you in the life of this Diocese, and we will remain faithful. We will not hold things back from you, and we will remain in regular communication.

If it should be that my health does take a turn for the worse, I will do what is needed to accomplish the election of the next Diocesan Bishop. I have notified Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, Bishop Stacy Sauls, and the Rev. Canon Chuck Robertson, and they have all assured me that they will do all they can to be of assistance.

I want to assure you all of the depth of love, respect and grace that I feel from this Diocese each day of my life. My love to you, my appreciation, and forever my dedication.

Yours in Christ,

+ J. Jon Bruno
Sixth Bishop of Los Angeles

Mrs. Patti's And Al Pacino's Birthday Sky

The heavens over St. John's Church and School this morning as we pray for healing for our bishop and rector, Jon Bruno, who is hospitalized with an infection, and in thanksgiving for the birthday of our chaplain and youth group leader, Patti Peebles

The View From Washington

I snapped this photo on Holy Tuesday from a St. John's Middle School classroom as seventh graders and I labored through 1 Peter. I offered it to Andrew Sullivan for his "View From Your Window" feature at "The Dish," which ran it today. A photo from Kathy's and my idyll in Twentynine Palms in March 2009 also made the cut.

Get Me To The Grand Canyon

St. John's Church, photographed with the AutoStitch Panorama app for iPhone. Hat tip to School Committee member (and Nixon confederate from bygone days) Noah McMahon

Present At The Creation

If parish ministry is the best work in the world, baptisms may be the best of the best. Jack Christopher Hageman was marked as Christ's own forever this morning at St. John's, wearing the baptismal gown that his great-great-grandmother made in Ireland a century ago. His sister, Abby Rose, wore it at her baptism, which I also had the blessing to perform. I officiated at the marriage of Jill, my St. John's School colleague, and Bill Hageman. If you sense I'm grasping for some small measure of credit in connection with this wonderful family enterprise, you're not half wrong. Pastors do that.

Both Child And Crucified

"The Conversion of St. Paul" by Italian renaissance master Caravaggio is well known to those who have attended St. John's continuing Christian education (and seventh grade New Testament) classes. Here's how it was described by Caravaggio biographer Andrew Graham-Dixon in a Dec. 1 podcast interview with one of the most cogent interviewers in the country, Sam Tanenhaus:

He's just painted St. Paul by his horse, lying on the ground. But the horse makes the scene feel like a manger, so St. Paul at the moment of his conversion is Christ the child, Christ the infant, and yet his pose, with his arms outspread, is that of the Crucifixion. What Caravaggio has brilliantly telescoped into this image is the idea that at the moment of conversion Paul experiences...mystically the entire life of Christ in his mind's eye as he's blinded by the divine light of revelation. He's both Christ the child and Christ the crucified.

Holy Families

At the St. John's School Early Childhood Center Christmas pageant, last week on Grandparents Day

At last night's elementary school pageant

Red Noses And Angel Voices

The St. John's Middle School choir was due at a local retirement community for their annual Christmas concert. The young people, hoofing it from our campus a half-mile away, got a late start because of the chilly, changeable weather.

I arrived early and sat in the lobby as concertgoers gathered. "It was supposed to start at 9:30," one resident said. Her friend replied knowingly, "It was moved to 10." Looking at her watch, someone else said, "It's 10 now." One of the first two wondered whether the performance would interfere with lunch. Older people often get up and eat and go to bed earlier, but I still thought it would be okay.

The double doors burst open, and the red-cheeked Cardinals soared in. The choir was introduced by Mrs. Bonhall and conducted by Mrs. Speciale, who sounding each song's starting pitch in her pellucid soprano. They sang ten numbers, including "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," "Deck The Halls," and "Jingle Bell Rock." Residents smiled, sang, and clapped. As would have happened if Pavarotti or any temperamental genius had been a half-hour late for a recital, memories of the brief delay were borne away on angel voices.

During "Rudolph," as I took pictures, a woman tapped me on the shoulder and pointed. One chorister had donned a red nose that was blinking in time with the music. I thanked the woman with a smile. She winked. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

Two By Two In Noah's Limo

That's entrepreneur and marketing genius Noah McMahon (also a St. John's School trustee and a parent, with the gracious Debbie) with the last limo Richard Nixon ever used, an early 1990s Chrysler. Noah acquired it several years ago and has had it beautifully restored. He'll be making it available for the sake of good causes everywhere. The license plate Noah has on order? POTUS37. Wish I'd thought of it. I'm not seven feet tall, by the way. Noah was stooping so people would seek the historic wheels.

Pauline Faultline

In the middle of the first century, within about 20 years of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the great apostle Paul of Tarsus wrote these words to a community of Christians living in Rome [Rom. 12:14-21, NRSV]:

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

I remember how overcome by evil I felt that morning, and those weeks, and all those months. Almost all of us remember. The smoke and fire. The faces of the missing, lost, and fallen. The anxiety about what might come next. Many people felt a parchedness of the spirit, even the temptation to perceive God’s silence, indifference, or absence.

Then there was the rage. Do you remember feeling the rage?

Imagine St. Paul coming to town in the weeks after Sept. 11, preaching his bold sermons about blessing those who persecute us. A considerable number would have stood up in church and assured Paul that that vengeance wouldn’t be God’s anywhere near as soon as it would be ours.

If we feel more secure on this anniversary than we did five years ago or nine years ago, it’s because of the methodical, bloody work undertaken by United States military and intelligence services against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. They haven’t eliminated the threat, but they’ve reduced it.

We may not call this vengeance. We may call it a just and proportionate response to the evil our enemies have done.

Yet I will tell you – I’m not proud, but it’s true -- that my heart leaped with satisfaction at the news, which came not long after the joy of Easter, that Osama bin Laden had been killed by an American who pulled the trigger in that compound in Abbottabad and shouted, “For God and country.”

We pause to thank all the men and women who protect us – those who by their diligence and valor have purchased the blessing we enjoy this afternoon of remembering and reflecting in freedom and in relative security.

Yet we Christians still have to contend with St. Paul. Pacifism may be your witness. Perhaps it should be mine, but it isn’t.

But how do the faithful do violence?

Can we love and kill our enemies at the same time?

Are we too prone to mistaking our neighbor for our enemy?

What risks do we run by insisting that we are wise and holy enough ever to extend the arm of God’s own justice?

In Rome during the Emperor Claudius’s time, when Paul wrote his letter, observant Jews were arguing with Christians. Jewish Christians were arguing with non-Jewish Christians. Rome was persecuting both Jews and Christians.

Can you imagine what it was like back in the day -- the fear and mutual suspicion, the scapegoating and the name-calling?

As a matter of fact, you probably can – if you remember the aftermath of Sept. 11.

If we are to achieve justice without vengeance – if we are to act as God would have us act so far as it depends on us – then the call of the gospel is to a relentless discipline of humility and forgiveness. Angry and hurt as we may be, whether in our national life or our daily lives, these virtues are supposed be our default settings.

Paul went so far as to imagine an improbable Roman paradise in which Jews, Christians, and pagans set aside their enmity for the sake of their humanity – a paradise he understood would be populated one proud, reluctant soul at a time.

Today, Paul might well promote harmony among Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all believers – even harmony between Democrats and Republicans.

My wife, Kathy, and I have attorney friends named Harry Waizer and Karen Walsh. Harry grew up in Brooklyn as an orthodox Jew. Karen grew up Roman Catholic in Westchester County. Many of their family members boycotted their wedding. Their Jewish and Catholic mothers shunned one another.

Harry worked for Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center and was burned by jet fuel over most of his body after the terrorists attacked. He was in a coma for weeks. Doctors gave him a 5% chance, but he beat those odds, and he’s back at work.

A few weeks ago, Karen told us about the night in late September 2001 when she arrived at the hospital after a long day of working and caring for their children. Walking down the darkened hall toward Harry’s room, she saw two small figures walking ahead, hand in hand.

If you knew instinctively that the two figures were Harry and Karen’s mothers, then you already have a profound understanding of the glory of which humanity is capable, the fellowship, joy, and peace to which we are all called by our Creator.

Karen said that she worried that if Harry had awakened as his two mothers leaned over him, their worried faces looming side by side, he would have assumed that he was dead.

Harry didn’t have to wait that long. Neither do we.

I made these remarks at an interfaith service at St. John's Episcopal Church and School in Rancho Santa Margarita on the afternoon of Sunday, Sept. 11.

St. John's Holy Wednesday Sky

"Godspell" And The Judas Paradox

When Christopher Lanham, now a St. John's eighth grader, was five or six, his father, Randall, a diligent Bible student, told him that Jesus's death enabled the salvation of the world at the first Easter.

Wouldn't that mean, Christopher replied, that Judas was a good guy?

Christopher was doing the kind of exegesis you don't normally encounter in kindergarten. Second century theologians grappling with the same paradox produced the revisionist, non-canonical gospel of Judas, in which the great betrayer is portrayed as Jesus's co-conspirator. Christopher solved the riddle his own way early this month in the St. John's Middle School production of "Godspell," in which he portrayed both John the Baptist, who was present at the beginning of Jesus's public ministry, and Judas, who helps bring it to an end.

My thanks to Christopher's mother, Kristen Welles Lanham, who helped the cast and crew get ready for their performances and also graciously sent me the photo of Christopher and me as well as of the Holy Eucharist the cast, crew, and I celebrated a couple of hours before the April 7 premiere. We used the propers for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, whose musical cadences opened the hearts of his congregations and audiences to the possibility of a better world. Our young people did the same with their song, dance, and acting. As I wrote to the people of St. John's in our annual Easter letter:

The players’ energy had their audiences grinning, and the rousing tunes had our toes tapping. But the end was all too familiar. The world rejected the son of God. His followers couldn’t stay awake with him, even for an hour. The Cross.

Thankfully, the kids (including Jesus) rushed back in for their last number and curtain calls. The music swelled, and the audience, at all four shows, responded with standing ovations. The cast and crew had worked long hours, after school and on weekends, to get ready. Their faces glowed with pride at a job well done. Having just reenacted the moment when humanity failed God, they brimmed with hope and possibility, promise and love. It reminded me of the feeling I get every Easter, bathed in the forgiving light of the empty tomb.

In the audience at the closing performance on April 10 was our St. John's Easter miracle herself, seven-year-old Emma Williams (left), who saw the show with a friend.

Ferlo Days

The Rev. Dr. Roger Ferlo, born into a working class Roman Catholic family in upstate New York, was ordained an Episcopal priest 25 years ago. Theologian, writer, seminary dean and professor, and cellist, he has devoted considerable energy over the last 15 years to the National Assn. of Episcopal Schools. At NAES's quarterly governing board meeting this week in Portland, Oregon, he stepped down as board member and president. The good work of our busy two-day meeting notwithstanding, many of Roger's colleagues said they feared having to get along without his erudition and gracious, priestly presence.

And shrewd tactical instincts, because there's politics everywhere, even in the church and especially at hundreds of Episcopal schools that work in sometimes uneasy collaboration with parishes. Imagine what can happen when two institutions, shepherded by strong-willed school heads and priests doing the seemingly divergent work of teaching children and ministering to aging congregations, have to share leadership, finances, and real estate. Priests at parishes with schools sometimes complain that heads get all the attention, heads that priests just don't get schools.

Tensions seemed to escalate as the church lost members while schools grew, though in recent years enrollment has leveled off. Amid change and crisis, our Episcopal-Anglican values, which teach us to live with ambiguity, haven't always been enough to help testy neighbors manage their differences. If our experience at St. John's Episcopal Church and School is any guide, a successful confederation makes for a lively, diverse, worshipful community. But some on both sides of the fence say that Episcopal schools can only really thrive when they achieve independence from parishes.

Church-school disharmony also echoes society's prevailing incivility and household discord. Like all pastors, I've counseled angry, discouraged spouses. As a school vicar and religion teacher, I've noticed that while lessons about church doctrine can leave students cold, a unit on Cain and Abel gets the attention of anyone with an annoying sibling (and what sibling doesn't have one?). Bickering and divorce have become societal norms; schism remains an all-too-common ecclesiastical one. Going against the grain takes patience and grit. No matter what his personal views are on the inevitability of school independence, Roger Ferlo, among others at NAES, models a coequal passion for parish and school ministry that encourages optimists in their faith in the creative coexistence between our fractious Episcopal relations.

Perhaps the children will lead us yet again. Portland's Oregon Episcopal School, where Roger and Anne's daughter, Liz Harlan-Ferlo, is high school chaplain and a member of the religion faculty, hosted the NAES board on Thursday. I had a chance to ask some students what they said when non-OES friends wondered what "Episcopal" meant. Their answers demonstrated an instinctual grasp of contemporary Anglican theology. One student said our church has to do with community; another said it's all about service. Maybe building stronger households and communities through the habit of mutual servanthood can help keep our families together amid the inevitable disturbances of our common lives -- husbands, wives, partners, siblings, even schools and churches.

My Parents' Hands

When I think of my mother Jean's strong fingers, she's typing 75 wpm on a Royal manual in a newsroom or the stylish Olivetti in the blue case that she carried to Jerusalem on a reporting trip after the Six-Day War. I think of my father Harvey's slim hands massacring Beethoven piano sonatas or squaring off his cigarette lighter on top of a pack of Chesterfields next to his martini on the coffee table.

I've been thinking today about hands and handing over. Fifty years ago -- yes, on an April Fool's Saturday; it probably explains a lot -- they hand-wrote inscriptions in the King James Bible they presented on the occasion of my baptism by the Rev. Canon Howard McClintock at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Detroit.

I was six, which is old for an infant baptism. My genial but abstracted father, also a journalist, moved out when I was two, and even before then, as I understand it, it was never dull, because of the music and martinis. My mother worked long hours as a pioneering general assignment reporter for the Detroit Free Press to support us and finally pay my father's attorney to divorce her, since otherwise that might never have happened, either. I was lucky to have received the sacrament as early as I did.

Harvey died in 1975. My mother doesn't type as much as she used to, though she can still write an eloquent and whimsical e-mail. I type like crazy, when my fingers aren't itching to play the guitar. On my father's beloved piano, I only got as far as massacring Mozart sonatas. After decades of air guitar I bought my first dreadnought on my 40th birthday and have learned to play well enough to accompany myself singing folks songs. I play with church friends and for St. John's School students during chapel. Last weekend in the mountains, friends sat politely as I struggled through two Tom Russell songs and one by John Prine. When I'm playing guitar a lot, I'm blogging less, and then the other way around. Kathy definitely prefers the blogging, but I love them both, because I was anointed by my parents' hands and blessed by the things they loved.

Casting A "Godspell" At St. John's

St. John's seventh grader Olivia Thomas belts out a solo during this afternoon's "Godspell" rehearsal. The 1970 musical by Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak will be the first middle school annual production to be staged in our beautiful church since its consecration in 2003. Four performances, April 7-10; ticket information here.

Cade's Story (Find The Cleenex Before Reading)

During a year of student teaching, my St. John's friend and colleague Tedda Duhey worked with a teacher named Mike whose five-year-old son, Cade, suffered a stroke following an operation a few months ago. Mike's wife is Erin; Cade's newborn sister is Lucy. Mike takes it from there:

It was a Thursday. Ten days after the surgery and stroke, and six days after Cade had a four-hour seizure. Cade was laughing a lot. Laughing too much. He wasn't responding the way he had been before the seizure. His eyes seemed to be staring through us.

We didn't talk about it. I didn't write about it. Part of us was still so encouraged that he was smiling and laughing.

But we knew it. Something was off. He wasn't "there."

That night Erin's dad stayed with Cade while we went to Main Place mall to get away for a bit. To get our minds off of everything. It didn't work. As the night went on, a dark cloud hung over the both of us. A sick feeling. A feeling of uncertainty and sadness.

We didn't talk about it. But we knew it.

When we left to come back we couldn't find our car. We looked through almost every exit more than once trying to see something that looked familiar. After an hour of searching we finally found it inside a parking structure. I had absolutely no recollection of parking in that structure. I think my mind was so heavy with Cade as we drove there, that I couldn't remember where we parked. The truth is I probably shouldn't have even been driving.

As we headed back to Children's Hospital of Orange County, the sick cloud still hung over us, only now it was coupled with an urgency for Erin to get home to Lucy. I dropped her off in front of the hospital while I parked the car.

I was alone. I thought of Cade. I thought of him on Christmas Eve a month earlier. He was so excited that night. Excited to be at church. Excited to see everyone. To be with everyone.

I thought of Cade upstairs. Was he gone? I broke down in that car. I remember just saying sorry to him through my tears.

I'm so sorry, Cade.

Honestly, part of me said goodbye to him that night.

The next morning. January 28. A Friday. Cade woke up early. He smiled. No, he smirked. Something had changed. Something in his eyes. He was looking at me, not through me...at me! I spoke to him. He responded. And then we had a Thumb-War.

Cade came back to us that morning. God gave him back to us. He couldn't speak. He couldn't move his right side at all, but he was back,

...and he has been back ever since.

Things were so different after that point. We knew we had such a long road of recovery ahead of us, but strange as it may sound, we were okay with it. Cade was here, with us. I remember Erin and I both saying to each other, "We can do this. With Cade back with us, like this? We can do this!"

Every day since, Cade has got a little better. His body is catching up with his mind. No, with his spirit! We have been using the story of Lazarus as a picture for what we believe God is doing in Cade. After Jesus had brought Lazarus back to life, they began to remove the linens that covered him. God has been slowly unwrapping the linens that cover Cade. Although there is still more to go, we are so thankful for every miracle along the way. Miracles that so many of you have shared with us through this amazing website. You have been here with us, in his hospital room, walking beside us, praying for us, praising God with us!

We thank you for every prayer, for every guestbook entry, for every Facebook message, for every email, for every time you logged on to CaringBridge to see how our little Cade was doing. This little guy that so many of you have been praying for everyday, that so many of you have never even met.

Thank you.

Shortly after the stroke, Dr. Loudon came in and tickled Cade's foot, and Cade moved his right leg a few inches. I remember being so encouraged. I remember saying out loud, "He's gonna walk out of this place!" I didn't really know what I was saying.

And Thursday we are going home. After being away for 86 days, we are finally going home. By no means is this the end of the marathon. We are simply changing the setting,

...simply changing arenas.

We are bringing Cade home for the first time since Christmas Day. We are bringing his sister, Lucy, home for the first time...ever.

And Thursday, sometime around noon, holding his mommy and daddy's hands, our little Cade, our little superhero,

will walk out of this place,

...leaving a huge pile of linens on the floor behind him.

God is good all the time.

St. John's Sky

Go blue!